Raider Nation
Devil's Advocate
PIC
The casino of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas smells like pool water, old shoes, cigar smoke and that weird, blood smell of coins. Peter Korian and his younger brother, Steve, are too excited to care. As the two walk hurriedly past long rows of buzzing slot machines named Triple-Double Wild Cherry and Lucky Larry's Lobstermania, none of the foggy-eyed gamblers pulling levers and pressing buttons has any idea that one of the best fantasy football-playing duos in the world is passing by.
It's Saturday morning, the day before the first full slate of games in the 2009 NFL season, and the Korians are heading to the Main Event of the World Championship of Fantasy Football. The winner will take home $300,000, a fitting prize for participants who have often spent years obsessing about the NFL. The Korians have prepped for draft day for months, cramming hard-core all of the past week. While most everyone else in Vegas spends their time attending shows, dropping loads of cash or stumbling back to hotels through the debris of the Strip, the brothers and others like them hole up in their rooms busily simulating dozens of mock drafts on their laptops and poring over cheat sheets, simultaneously watching hours of NFL pontification on cable. With their curtains open just enough to reveal the desert in the day and the glitter of the buildings at night, they also read news stories, making careful notes about injured starters.
The Main Event, also known as the WCOFF, takes a special kind of player. The league you play in with your co-workers? Don't think for a second that you could hack the Main Event, which attracts the most serious fantasy football fanatics. Never mind that the underlying notion behind the competition is that it's supposed to be fun. Since its inception, in 2002, the WCOFF has grown from 500 to nearly 3,000 entrants expected in 2010, with draft-day festivities moving from an MGM ballroom to the hotel's 90,000-square-foot convention center. It's now the world's biggest fantasy football draft in terms of buy-in, payouts, grand prizes (some $2 million between the Vegas events and satellite drafts in Orlando, Chicago and Atlantic City) and level of competition, drawing wealthy, ambitious and dedicated players. "These are the guys who love it so much they're willing to organize their local drafts, set the rules and run the leagues," says Dustin Ashby, who coordinates the WCOFF for the World Championship of Fantasy Sports, a St. Louis-area company that organizes high-stakes fantasy baseball and football leagues. "These guys always win their leagues, because they just know that much more. We attract the avid of the avid."
He means guys like the Korians. The brothers, each of them married with two kids, are consumed. They think about football all year, follow the games on their computers and on multiple TVs at home, read dozens of fantasy football websites and subscribe to insider blogs and newsletters. They just look at football in a different way than you do. In fact, they consider themselves equivalent to NFL head coaches, armed with the kind of info that can help evaluate players with cutthroat certitude.
Chalk it up to the Korians' 25-year history of playing some form of fantasy football. Back in high school, in Belmont, Mass., Peter ran a weekly pool and created schedules, box scores and standings with the help of Steve. Decades later, both were working for Iomedia, the New York City design firm Peter started, when they had a revelation. "We were like, We put so much time into this -- what the hell else is out there?" Peter says. "We had heard about high-stakes baseball leagues, and I think we just started looking. We were interested in making money."
The brothers (Peter is 39, Steve 38) first entered the WCOFF in 2005 and won their division, beating 11 other teams. They became the fastest, most consistent players, winning their divisions every year they participated. Heading into the 2009 WCOFF, Steve ranks as the No. 2 fantasy football player in the world, while Peter claims the No. 4 spot. (Each player's division wins and losses are used to determine standings.) They've never won the whole thing but have come close and usually end up making enough to pay for their annual trip to Vegas, where the buy-in typically runs about $1,800.
The Korians kick off draft week much as they have in previous years, curled up in leather chairs at the MGM Race & Sports Book on Thursday night, drinking beer and giggling like kids. Their eyes scan the 54 gigantic TVs on a wall in front of them, darting from baseball to college football to the Steelers-Titans season opener. Other draft participants are hanging around too. (You can spot them by the NFL jerseys they're wearing.) A hundred guys in a big den, betting and yelling in an atmosphere both competitive and convivial.
But it's on Friday morning that the fun -- at least from the brothers' point of view -- really begins. The Korians prep for the draft in their hotel room, arguing most of the time about which QB to take in later rounds (Steve opts for Ben Roethlisberger), whether Jets running back Leon Washington (now with the Seahawks) will have more than 6 TDs this year and if Seattle wideout T.J. Houshmandzadeh will do big things in the NFC. Occasionally, sitting in front of their laptops at a table by the window, they joke around. Sample: "Jamal Lewis runs like old people bang."
Later that night, after hours of strategizing, the Korians take a breather outside a restaurant in the middle of the clogged main artery of the MGM. An older man steps out of the throng and quickly catches their attention. They recognize his slicked-back white hair, neatly trimmed mustache and stern visage from the pictures they've seen on the WCOFF website. It's Poochie Bennish. In 2008, he won the tournament's grand prize -- awarded during Super Bowl week, no less -- after Bears kicker Robbie Gould made an overtime field goal during Week 16. (The 120 winners from each of the league's 12-team divisions advance to a championship bracket.) Right now, Bennish stands in the middle of the walkway, oblivious to the mob swarming past. Suddenly, he gazes up at the ceiling and remains still for a good two minutes, looking like a god.
"Dude, that's so weird," Peter says.
"People here are weird, dude," Steve replies. "It's time for us to bring a normal face to this." Perhaps, but for now the guys have larger concerns: The draft is just a few hours away. "Tonight," Peter says, "is like the night before the SATs."
The test begins early Saturday morning. The gridiron geeks march through the MGM, a parade of men dressed in NFL gear, with laminated ID badges dangling from their necks. Steve wears a Tedy Bruschi jersey and shorts, while Peter has donned a dark blue throwback Emmitt Smith replica and shorts. Each brother has a laptop bag slung over his shoulder, because a fantasy football fanatic's research is never done. While in line for coffee, they see two familiar faces from previous drafts: Shane Gray and Zach Jarosz are wearing white, homemade T-shirts with their team name, "BOOBS: Love Em!" spelled out on the front. The brothers-in-law, both in their mid-30s, don't get to see each other often and use this draft as a chance to catch up with their buddies. "The camaraderie here is magnificent," Jarosz says. "You see guys only once a year, but you feel like you know them."
Steve and Peter sign in, absorbing the sprawling scene and the countless horseshoe-shape tables draped with yellow cloth, tall rectangular draft boards at every one. They point out the weirdest- looking guys in the room and chuckle. At the moment, Mark McCauslin elicits most of the snickers. Also known as "Team Wizard," McCauslin, a Florida health-care worker, sports a blue velvet bathrobe, a pair of laced-up blue boxing shoes and a pointy blue velvet hat that he got at Disney World. His wild, curly gray hair is nearly as distracting as his outfit. He has played in various local leagues since the '80s and decided to ride a string of luck into trying the WCOFF the past few years. He hasn't had a ton of success so far. Not that it matters. For some competitors, it's not about the money.
But it is for Glenn Schroter, a tall, round guy from New York whom the Korians greet with a warm hello. "King of Queens" owns and runs a chain of day-care centers, and he plays to make the big bucks. He spent $40,000 in 2009 on drafts and might be even more obsessed with fantasy football than the brothers are. "I started playing mail-in leagues in 1986," he says, scanning rosters on his Palm Pre and the competition around the room. "Peter and Steve -- they're pretty good."
Walking around and people-watching at the Main Event is pretty much like walking around and people-watching in Vegas itself. The convention center is covered with banners and ads, including the WCOFF logo, an oval design with a football in the center that hangs above the players and that the brothers call "the eye of Sauron" after the character in The Lord of the Rings. The ceiling, lit by floodlights, is as bright as the day. At every turn, scantily clad women are dressed in the zebra stripes of a referee. Milling around are 2,000 other players -- nearly all men -- from across the country. But the brothers aren't fazed by their competition. "Some people seem destined to party and throw their money away," Steve says. "It's like Hollywood Week on American Idol. Some are in it to win it, and some are just there for the show." Count the Korians among the former. "Dude," Peter says, "we have to deliver."
As the draft kicks off a short time later, the lenses of Peter's designer eyeglasses glow in the light of the Draft Dominator customizable application running on his Dell laptop, which is open in front of him. The brothers usually enter as a team, but this year the league has split them up to encourage more competition (Peter's team is "Being Bill Parcells" while Steve has entered as "Being Bill Belichick"). Peter glances around his table and doesn't recognize any of the 14 other men as someone who might pose a serious threat. Only three of them have computers; the rest are writing down all the names by hand as they flip through paper rosters. "That's a sign they're not drafting dynamically," Peter says with a smirk.
The moderator, wearing a Frank Gore jersey, stands in front of the draft board and announces, "Team 3, you're on the clock."
Hearing his number, Peter doesn't pause. He takes Bears running back Matt Forte as his first pick, after Adrian Peterson goes first overall and Maurice Jones-Drew second. Forte, of course, had a rookie season that made fantasy players drool, scoring 12 touchdowns and racking up more than 1,700 yards rushing and receiving in 2008. Peter expects him to have an even better sophomore campaign. "I like this," he whispers. "The kinds of players being picked are not the guys I have targeted." Seven rounds later, though, he's nervous. He has chosen Colts running back Donald Brown. "That coulda been a mistake," he texts his brother.
There's real tension in the silence between picks. The only noise comes from moderators announcing who's on the clock. Peter, who fidgets constantly in his chair, and Steve bristle at every name. ("That's just crazy," Steve says when someone selects Tom Brady in an early round.) Unlike many drafts, there are no trades later in the season, which only adds to the pressure. "Everybody is on the edge of their seat," Peter says.
In Round 13, four hours in, Steve seems spent and leans on his elbows as he glances across the room at his brother. With one of his later picks, Steve selects Bucs fullback Earnest Graham. "I feel great," he says after it's over. "In reality, I might've missed some opportunities, but people in my league made some big mistakes. The most important thing to do is to just put up at least 145 points a week. I'm hoping I can put up 160."
Saturday night, after the draft, the Korians stop thinking about point totals long enough to play a little blackjack. Peter wins $1,000 to take back to New York on the red-eye. (The brothers want to watch Sunday's games at home.) If he's really lucky, his good fortune will extend to the WCOFF.
He's not really lucky.
As the 2009 season unfolds, Peter's team starts slowly, then implodes, partly because Matt Forte wasn't worth the No. 3 pick. Steve's team finishes third in his division, earning him $500. Today, as the 2010 season looms, Peter knows where he went wrong. "I never liked Forte," he says. "But so many people were drafting him one, two, three. And it was almost like peer pressure to do it. We've never drafted that way before."
Recently, he read that Forte will be just as great as he was in 2008 and that the Bears are going to make him the centerpiece of their offense this season. The Korians might have to consider him again. After all, they'll be hitting the Main Event for the sixth year in a row. But this time, the competition promises to be even stiffer when it convenes on Sept. 9. The WCOFF's computers have spat out the current rankings: Steve has dropped to No. 7, while Peter is No. 11.
That's why the Korians are already prepping for the big event. Sitting in their offices at Iomedia, they've kicked into high gear, working from 9 to 6, then studying football from 6 to 9. Because that's what it takes to win.
"This," Steve says, "is a twisted little world."
... They are pros!As soon as I saw who their first pick was, I knew how the story turned out.
Awesome!
